Love Each Child

You Keep Using That Word…

by steve

One of my favorite movies of all time is “The Princess Bride”. It’s one of those movies that never seems to get old, no matter how many times you watch it, and you find yourself quoting lines from it any chance you get.

One of my favorite lines from that movie is in a scene where Vezzini (sp?) keeps saying, “Inconceivable!” as the plot unfolds in ways that he never thought could happen. Finally, Innigo says to him, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Our darling little Hope Giver has developed her own word recently that makes me want to say that line to her almost every time. The word? “Nokay.” She uses it when she doesn’t want something offered to her. “Do you want your diaper changed?” “Nokay.” “Are you ready to take a nap?” “Nokay.”

It’s obviously a combination of the words “no” and “okay”, although we’re not entirely sure how it came about. At first we thought it might be her version of “No, thank you” since we have been trying to get her to say (or sign) that phrase when refusing something. The way she says “nokay” (which is almost always very pleasant and courteous) sounds contextually like the way one would say “No, thank you.”

But our other theory (which seems to fit a little better) is that we were in the habit of responding to anytime she said “no” with “no? Okay.”

Regardless of the origin of the word that she has created, the fact that it sounds mostly like “okay” when she’s really saying “no” cracks me up.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” But then, since she’s the one that made the word up, I guess it can mean whatever she wants it to mean!